And It's Like This
by Demeter1
Summary: Rikku's life. And then some. Vaguely AuronRikku.


**"And It's Like This"**

**Demeter**

******Disclaimer:** All rights and privileges of Final Fantasy X/X-2 characters, objects and plots are property and trademarks of Square Enix, Playstation, and associated parties. The author claims no legal responsibility for problems associated with using this work. The original story, relationships, and characters found within the fic are property of Demeter.

******Rating:** 13+

******Characters:** Rikku and her ever-changing cast of friends.

******Notes:** I spent almost two years on this stupid thing. Still not perfect, still not satisfactory, but after all the tweaking, I think this is the closest I'll be getting.

* * *

Rikku is three, the sun is cloaked by billowing dust and magic, hot dandelion fire everywhere, there's the sharp, metallic scent of death in the air, her papa's crying, harsh sobs that shake his whole body and he can't bear to look at his only daughter because she has the face of her mother. She looks behind her and the whistling wind whispers into her ear; she's leaving her home, she's leaving something behind, she's leaving the beautiful garden her mama so lovingly nurtured. There are too few of them, they are all frantically racing on bikes, many are crying like her papa, and she wonders…

_Where's mama?_

_

* * *

_

She dances on the water, only not, because she has none of the summoner faith in her and even if she did, it would have been ground to dust by both Yevon and Al Bhed, they who do not love the faithful of faith, who scorn the sent missionaries and their bags of grain. Pride is a strong salve against hunger and Rikku easily learns to ignore her pangs.

She dances because her body arches and bends in time to fiends and pyreflies, to memories and prophecies. She vaguely forgets her the-woman-of-gardens but all she has to do is look in the mirror and it all comes rushing back so Rikku methodically destroys all her mirrors.

The dance sweeps her arms and the water fiends gather.

Something yellow and fast and _brutal_ streaks through the air like an out-of-control machina and it stabs liquid pain through her body. Her body bounces on air and flails in uncontrollable fits – Rikku sees the-woman-of-gardens smiling and the tears she's held back all this time burst in an explosion of charred flesh and new-born fears.

* * *

Rikku is five and her people are cursing with anger and sorrow because the only summoner who has ever given them love and hope and everything dear has given his life to Sin, to Yevon, to _faithless_ fayth and they can feel the dirt beneath their fingertips _tremble_ with joy from the masses who are now celebrating a Calm that will end for yet another Summoner to dance their way to the Farplane. Their hatred for Yevon increases tenfold and too many wish for the death of Mika, the only convenient figurehead.

All the while, Rikku stares up at her _vydran_, her papa, because his dark eyes are sad but they can't hate, they don't hate, and he's fingering the tattered photo of another little girl – but older than she will ever be – Rikku has never met. This little girl is very pretty, has mismatched eyes that are half the sinful green of Al Bhed and half the mystical blue of Bevelle and somehow, Rikku can't help but wonder what it would be like for the-not-quite-so-little-girl, because her _vydran_ just died and is she sad like Rikku would be?

Her Uncle Rin drags in a body draped in tatters of red and she stares from the corner because everyone has become hushed and quiet and the Agency closes its doors. The Agency _never_ closes its doors but today they do and today is different, Rikku can tell. Rin is always jovial and kind, but today, he's neither. He barks and orders and people come rushing in with glowing bottles, with clean bandages the size of mini-shoopufs, with hot water and worried eyes and she thinks about the-woman-of-gardens.

She creeps around legs and corners. Rikku is very good about squeezing into places grownups didn't want her to be. A man is convulsing on the bed and rich scarlet blood – it reminds her of fire and dandelions and pyreflies – bubbles at his mouth. There's a nasty big gash staining his coat, but it couldn't be any more scarlet than it already is and Rikku feels like someone took a big owie and multiplied it by about a gazillion.

His head turns and she sees even elixirs won't keep this red man from _maybe_ fiendhood.

The others sprint to summon doctors, to find other medicines, to get the specialist Ronso who lives on the craggy edges of Mt. Gagazet and doesn't care about their Al Bhed status. No one notices Rikku stay and creep to his side like a wraith choked up on speed spheres. She remembers the little girl of mismatched eyes and the-woman-of-gardens.

So Rikku pats his head with her chubby child-hand he can't see her, his eyes have gone blind, the man only had one whole eye anyways, but he laughs wetly because she reminds him of another little girl, one he left with a faithful Ronso and that he has promises to keep. He has no strength, but the darkness in one eye will remind him of her. No one else is there when he just blinks away into magic fairy dust and the air smells like burnt apple crisps. Rikku loves burnt apple crisps but they're a rare treat and she feels mad that he didn't share any with her before he left.

* * *

Rikku is seven and the world is one filled with sand, machina, and the sounds of rebuilding that have replaced the older cranks and creaks. She's glad to see that everyone's sweating away their painful memories and she thinks that maybe this is _the_ place for their future. She goes skippity-skip and hop-dances over the sand and likes the way the hot sun makes her skin burn pink and raw.

There is no ocean and there are no large bodies of water. Rikku can dance and dance and no water fiends come up to bother her. It almost never storms and the thunder and lightening stay far away on the plains. Fiends burrow their way through soft sand and old skeletons and the whistling wind sounds like singing.

* * *

She thinks she's in love. Gippal is as bright as dandelion fire and sometimes it hurts to look at him.

* * *

Rikku is fifteen and she finally meets Braska's daughter, her aunt's child, the niece of her Pop, Yuna, Yunie, summoner imbued, woven sacrifice, death walking, hope reborn. Yuna is more beautiful than Rikku imagined and she feels her imagination falls too short. She knows where Yuna's path lies and she knows that no one will stop her. They say it's her choice, they say she wants this, they say she is doing a great deed for Yevon, for Spira, for the _people_ who have suffered under the heavy weight of Sin.

The words caress the tip of her tongue, they gouge bloody wounds on the insides of her cheeks, because the choice they say Yunie makes is not a choice at all. How is it a choice when not making that choice would make her a coward and worse? Rikku knows what happens to Summoners who abandon their quest. Their stories end too abruptly, like candles being snuffed out by a violent wind. Does no one notice how hard it is to cross the Calm Lands? Why didn't people see the reason why there are so few High Summoners?

Because.

After all, who wants to die? That's the trick, isn't it? Rikku knows the twisting zigzags and clues and needs and a Summoner has to want to _live_. A Summoner intent on dying will never defeat Sin, because Sin is about death and destruction and sure enough, taxes. Bevelle has a collection plate, entirely voluntary of course, but what faithful Yevonite wouldn't donate a tithe of their yearly income? A Summoner must want life so badly that they're spitting out phoenix downs in their spare moments away from saving the world. They _must_ want to dance with their feet swinging in time with the beat of Spira's heart, their journeys filled with life and expectation, never with resignation and self-sacrifice.

Summoners are hope and a Summoner without hope and laughter will never reach Zanarkand to die. The irony is like the thick icing on a cake of chocolate and guilt and Rikku wants to smash it into Yevon's face.

* * *

Eyes that bend inward with spirals are not the eyes of a Yevonite. Anyone who knows anything knows the eyes of Al Bhed bend backwards because they sin, because they're the abyss where a soul should reside. Their eyes are divine punishment for going against the teachings, are an indication of their proximity to oiled up machina all rumbly and thumbly with desire to fight and move and _live_. It's yet another irony of Spira, where the machina are more alive than the people.

Rikku's pop snorts and says things like, _right, and I'm a damn shoopuf._ Sometimes, Rikku thinks her pop has all the wisdom of Spira and then some. Otherwise, how else could he swallow bullets from the air and shout like a jazz song turned up too high? He teaches her things like how to take apart a machina and put it back together with her eyes closed and one hand tied behind her back. It's not particularly useful, but Rikku thinks she'll probably put it to work _some_ day.

Al Bhed are the reminder of everything Spira has done wrong and who likes being reminded of past mistakes?

* * *

He's a big bad guardian, the stuff of legends, Rikku's kindasorta nemesis but she likes him anyway. Sure, he's a big grouch in the mornings and he tells her not to touch his sword and that if he found her rifling through his pack just _one more time_ he'd take her by the pants and throw her off a cliff. And she thinks he's serious.

But Auron doesn't say a word about her spirals and it's enough to plant a little seed of fondness. The-woman-of-gardens used to say that plants have to be watered with care and prudence and everything he does adds just a few drops here and a few drops there. It's a hardy little bit and takes root like everything else.

She goes through the steps of their journey like liquid sunshine, bright and tasty and filled with vitamins, but he plods like a chimera doped up on bitter acid and she wants to tell him, dude, there's no hurry to go off to Zanarkand and watch Yunie die. But Rikku's just an itty-bitty girl who still hasn't puked from drinking far too much; telling off a Legendary Guardian (even one as grouchy and pole axed as him) is not high on her list of things to do before running knee-deep into religious politics and misplaced good intentions.

Rikku does a lot of things but deliberately looking for trouble isn't one of them. She hopes.

* * *

Rikku knew the day would come when a certain unnamed jerk born of Yevon's overbearing policies and narrow vents would find out who she was and look at that, it ended just as she thought it might. The jerk can't accept her and somehow, it's hard to blame him. She wishes it could be different, but it's not, so she in turn accepts his inability to accept her and drives off with Auron clasped to her back. No way was she going to let _him_ drive her precious machina.

The ice shards fly pass her face and she feels the cuts sting.

Auron's the first to break their silence. "He'll get over it."

She doesn't answer (Rikku regrets not answering, but there are times when nothing says more than everything and she appreciates his awkward gesture of comfort even if she was more inclined to believe Wakka would sneak into Kimahri's bed to fondle blue cat muscles at night than get over her Al Bhed-ness).

They drive and the path continues to the end of Sin and the end of Yuna.

* * *

It's hot dandelion fire all over again, but the sun's _choking_ this time on the dust and magic and floating pyreflies, the smell of death hovers in the air and even Wakka can smell it over the cries of the dying which is too ironic since she can't imagine how anyone could smell death cries. Rikku flips and tumbles head over heels in her haste. Her feet dig and falter in the soft sand and she can hear the roar of blood in her ears, it thuds, thuds as if she wants to bleed out all her pain and grief and disbelief that it was _happening all over again_ and who would she lose this time? Who would be buried beneath that towering catacomb of steel and machina and _linca oajuh cra luimth'd pnaydra_, it was too much to dance over twisted bodies and avoid the eyes of the dying as they sought a comforting hand.

Her heart skips, it stops like an old clock all gummed up by sticky mechanized oil.

_Keyakku_ and the points around her vision shatter, it breaks like a fragile ball of glass. The Al Bhed plains, the roaring sand, his hand ruffling her hair, words about the rebuilding of a new Home and Rikku's chin trembles too much. He looks at her with eyes glazed over in pain and he manages only two words

_Yevon_

_Guado_

then there's nothing else as the muscles slacken and she knows he will never stain the machina with potato grease or clog up the lounge with his innumerable card games again. There are so many others – too many – but seeing her childhood playmate sprawled across the floor makes hatred bloom and rage fester. She hates Yevon more than ever and she wishes for Auron's sword; she wants to skin the next Guado she sees, she wants to imprint the pain into their skin until they beg for mercy and are crawling on the floor in strips of stinking Guado flesh. How can there be horror when Keyakku lies dead before her?

There is no time to properly mourn, she must hurry, hurry, hurry, Yuna is in danger, Home is good as lost, she must move onto the next body, the next goal, abandon those who are lost and pretend that they won't be fiends on the morrows days as she _cannot send_ and no amount of dancing will fix her inability.

Rikku never cries but she knows Yuna will cry enough for everyone later on.

* * *

Home explodes in a brilliant display of fireworks and fire and shriekingscreamingdying fiends but the Al Bhed are long dead – she knows there are still those alive, not everyone could have possibly escaped, and she wonders what it is like to be killed by your own brethren because Pops had no choice?

Rikku is terribly alone. None of her companions know, all their grief is tied with Sin and the endless spiral, they don't understand what it is to lose their lives and beliefs and people to thick hatred, to the knowledge that hands of the supposedly peaceful were behind this, not Sin, no, not Sin this time. Sin, Sin is something Rikku can handle. Sin destroys methodically and without prejudice. It kills and wreaks havoc and doesn't really care who is being trampled.

But this is Home, this is the _home_ of the Al Bhed and they have been destroyed.

Rikku ignores Brother's sobbing and ventures into the hallway. She wonders where she can go on this big ship.

She tries not to stare at Auron, she really does, but he was a soldier of Bevelle, he once was a _Monk_ of _Yevon_, and bile rises in her throat. A part of Rikku wants to wail, wants to spit on him until he melts from her acidic saliva. But she knows he won't and she knows this isn't any of his concern. He's all about Yuna and the pilgrimage and getting Yuna's pretty little butt to Zanarkand so she can summon herself into oblivion. It's so unfair she has to bite her tongue in half to prevent words as dangerous as poison from spilling out.

"There was nothing you could have done."

It's another one of Auron's emotionless comments, devil-may-care, none of his business. Should she ignore him? Should she beat him on the chest? Should she tell him off? _Should she give him a kick in the nuts?_

Rikku does nothing. Instead, she goes up to him and for a brief moment, leans her forehead against his strong, unforgiving chest. She doesn't cry because she learned years ago tears never helped and she'd rather do something useful like string the engines together for a more efficient output. She appreciates his effort though, because she _does_ know there wasn't anything to be done.

She can't say she understands him but at the same time, she can't say she doesn't either.

* * *

Rikku is still fifteen.

Tidus is gone. Auron is dead (again). And her world stays upright.

Pops always said she was strong but when there's a hole carved into her chest cavity and she's still able to smile and make sure Yuna doesn't walk off the edge of the airship, Rikku wonders if this is all going to blow up in her face like a bright piñata some day later on. Yuna mourns and that's the _right_ thing, right? How come she can't cry for someone who was like her laughing twin, for a man who'd died ten years ago, a man who'd returned to fulfill some stupid promise he made to a drunkard and self-sacrificial lamb and who was she to think that was just a plain _waste_?

She's Al Bhed. Everything's a potential waste. The desert makes it so.

And it's a colossal freaking waste of Tidus and Auron and everything and everyone and Rikku wants to slam her clawed fists into soft flesh. It's so _unfair_ and Yuna did _not_ just spend all her life hunting for death to end up breathing it in through her nose. Is Tidus floating somewhere all muck-like and ewww, is Yuna eating all that fish in some sort of weird hope that she'll _eat_ Tidus? Rikku wants to burn the oceans dry and prove to Yuna that Tidus is gone and she cannot, should not, look for him with eyes that are always searching the sea.

Sometimes, she thinks she should take her own advice.

* * *

Rikku is seventeen years and Tidus comes back.

He comes back and so does Yuna and Gippal and all the people who'd ever made her journey. But wait. There is no more Auron to tease, no more Keyakku to yuk it up, even the Ronso tribe of Gagazet is still far too small to be any less of a reminder of betrayal and what Rikku thinks will be a long mark in the history between Guado and Ronso. Spira has changed and the change is both exhilarating and painful. Eternal Calms aren't the sort to last and she doubts this is the end of Spira's continuing spiral of violence. The people of Spira have lived with death and loss for more than a thousand years and she doesn't think it'll ever end and to be honest, Rikku prefers it that way. Yuna is the optimistic one, she believes in life and love and that there is good in all the souls of Spira, but Rikku knows this to be untrue. She won't say why, but she knows it, and she still thanks her non-existent gods that Yuna is alive and kicking to spread this vision.

Rikku also knows this is where Yuna's story of stories ends. Oh, her story of love and happiness and bright futures will _go on_ but the days of Yuna saving the world are over. She's certain that Yuna and Tidus and Wakka and Lulu and Kimahri and Cid and Isaaru and Gippal and Baralai and Paine and Nooj and Dona and Brother and Buddy and Shinra and even Leblanc will have happily ever afters. Their stories played out and had grand endings that spark spheres and reconciliations. Leblanc once said, in a fit of unusual melancholy and insight, that they were people never meant to be players on the main stage and those who were, but never let it be said that there wasn't a quick turnover rate.

Heroes are made everyday and she can seem them birth right before her eyes in the rocks along Mihen, the pulsing walls of Guadosalam, the arid air of Bikanel, they come out gasping on the shores of the sea and Rikku feels the need to dance renew itself.

* * *

Rikku is no longer seventeen.

The-woman-of-gardens – her beautiful mother – grins and a old hairbrush she left behind finds its way from Pop's treasure box to hers and every night, her braids are loosened, her spheres come off, and she runs a hundred strokes through her long and unmanageable hair. Rikku doesn't think of herself as a serious girl, but she'll look into her own green spiral eyes and think of a man in red, of what it means to love and not love and all the soft, miscellaneous in-betweens.

Everyone has someone now. They have happy endings, fairy dust and all. And Rikku?

Well, Rikku is Rikku and she's going to do what she's always done.

She's going to find her own story.

******- fin -**


End file.
